At first it seemed like a conundrum. The top-rated news sites by Nielsen//Netratings are almost always CNN.com and MSNBC.com, yet their corresponding cable news networks rank No. 2 and No. 3 behind the Fox News Channel. So why does Fox's Web site only show up at No. 15 on the Nielsen//NetRatings charts for last December?

It's all about traffic sharing: MSNBC.com has the firehose of traffic coming to it from the MSN hub, and CNN.com gets traffic funneled to it from AOL. Fox has no sister sites pushing traffic to it.

Despite that disadvantage, FoxNews.com has made some progress on its rivals lately, leveraging the strong loyalty of its many right-leaning TV fans to build a news site with personality, analysis and now video at its heart.

Since late 2000, unique vistors to FoxNews.com have more than tripled. In December 2003, the site had more than 4.5 million unique visitors who spent an average of more than 32 minutes at the site -- ranking third among top news sites for average length of session. Bert Solivan, 36, is vice president of news information at Fox News Channel and general manager of FoxNews.com. He told me the site's surge coincides nicely with the rise of the TV channel.

While other adjunct news sites have designs on overcoming their second-fiddle status, Solivan said FoxNews.com knows its place and is happy with it.

"I think the Web site is a strong adjunct to the brand, I think it's something that's important, but I don't think we should spend an inordinate amount of time on the air telling people to stop watching and look at the Web site," he told me. Solivan said the site's staff of 42 -- half in editorial -- works in the same building as the TV channel in New York.

While the site has never been promoted outside of TV promos, it is now setting its sights on the competition with a series of mini-redesigns and added features. Last fall, it launched a Weblog-type column from legal talk show host Greta van Susteren called Greta Wire, and it recently added a politics section, loads of streaming video and a section of the home page, "Only on Fox," that highlights Web-only material. A full-on redesign is scheduled for this summer, though details for it haven't been finalized.

I talked to Solivan twice over the past few weeks. The following is an edited transcript of those discussions about the new features, popular sections of the site and plans for the future.

OJR: Tell me about your background with Fox News and before that.

Bert Solivan: I'm general manager of the site, and in addition, the other hat I wear is I'm the head of news and information [for Fox News Channel], I oversee the 24-hour news research department. I'm responsible for the electronic data that comes into Fox News such as financial data. We use a lot of research tools such as Lexis/Nexis and Dow Jones and a slew of others.

My role was originally with the channel and the site was added to my plate [in 2000]. I've been at Fox since 1996, prior to the launch [of the channel]. Before that I ran a research consulting firm focused on venture capital firms, investment banks, plus we had clients on the legal side. I initially came over to Fox to help them create their research department.

OJR: How closely do you work with the TV channel?

BS: Very closely. We're working in concert with the channel -- editorially, the production side. There's a very strong working relationship with the channel. I don't even look at it as a separate enterprise. FoxNews.com is part of the channel. I look at it that way. You have your finance department, you have your graphics department, you have your whatever department. FoxNews.com is just one of those departments.

OJR: Why do you think your site has lagged behind the other news sites in ratings and content?

BS: We may be behind but we've had tremendous growth. I tend to look at the positive side and not the negative side. In terms of the amount of people that hit our site, obviously the CNNs of the world and MSNBCs have the advantage of their portals. When you talk about pure content sites [without a portal], I think we're pretty competitive.

Obviously, you have The New York Times and their readership, and they've had many, many years to build their brand. We've only been around a little over seven years. So in the scheme of things, we're very competitive. We're very competitive with ABCNews and USA Today and Washington Post, we're right in the mix with those guys.

OJR: So you think having a new brand has something to do with it being difficult to build a large audience?

BS: That has something to do with it. Not having a portal relationship has something to do with it. But the one key measure we look at for success is the loyalty, the brand loyalty, and it's that way on air and it transfers to the Web site. People really stay with our site and read through our site for long periods of time. And in that, we tend to be No. 1, 2 or 3 among news sites.

In time spent on the site, sometimes we're beating The New York Times and sometimes they're beating us. When you're talking about time spent on a news site, it's really The Wall Street Journal [online] and New York Times and we're right there. It's a great thing from an advertiser's perspective. You may not get the traffic of a CNN or MSNBC, but I know that the person who's going to FoxNews.com is staying on for a significant amount of time. That has a lot of value rather than someone flying through.

OJR: And whatever slant editorially the TV channel takes you're going to take?

BS: We're working in concert with the network, with the same objective editorial direction and the same approach as them. Like the channel, we also answer to John Moody [senior vice president of news editorial for Fox News].

OJR: At the moment, you don't charge for any content on your site. Have you looked at this and what are your thoughts on paid content?

BS: We have looked at this in the past, but at this point we are not going to do it. If something comes down the pike that's compelling, we would strongly consider it. But at this point, we're not looking to do that. It's not something we're going to do in the short term. Right now, ad revenues make up about 70 to 75 percent of our overall revenues online. The rest comes from a combination of our retail effort, Fox News Shop and paid search revenues.

OJR: A lot of news sites are saying they're profitable now. Are you near that as well?

BS: It's still the middle of our fiscal year, so I don't want to say anything officially. But we are definitely on target to hit profitablity for the year. There's two drivers for that. One is the control on the spending side, on the operations side. Secondly on the revenue side, obviously there's been an uptick there. If you do both sides of the business correctly, at some point you're going to make a profit.

OJR: How has the addition of video been received, and how has the traffic been to that?

BS: Traffic-wise, it's been in the Top 5 sections of the site. It's been received very well. What we found among our viewers is that 80 to 85 percent now have broadband access, so the ability for them to see video is there. A few years ago that percentage was a lot lower, but now the vast majority of people that use the site can experience the video, so the feedback is very very positive.

OJR: Are you going to use video ads similar to TV ads in your streaming video?

BS: Right now, we're doing a combination of sponsorships and ads in the player itself, but not within the video part of it. We're exploring that, in terms of repurposing TV ads, but we haven't done that yet. I think 30-second ads are too long. It would be nice to have them made specifically for the Web.

OJR: Has the politics section been a popular section of the site?

BS: Yes, it's been popular. Like the video section, we've had a lot of positive feedback. ... It has also been in the Top 5 sections, and it's widely read. People like watching the video within the politics section, and watching the speeches to really get a feel for the candidates. I think the political junkies drill down for more details. A lot of people have checked out the interactive feature with the candidates' views as well.

OJR: What other sections would you like to beef up?

BS: I'd really like to build out our business section in the future, to compete with other sites that have strong business sections. Right now, it's not where we need it to be or want it to be. We'd like to build it up so that people coming to our site for news won't have a reason to go away when they want to look at their portfolio, or look at what's going on in the market.

OJR: Tell me the process you go through when you redesign parts of the site.

BS: It's really a collaborative effort. We all sit down, the designers, the production team, the editorial side. The promotional side is there too and has a role to promote what's coming up on Fox News Channel and the site. It's really collaborative, and the ad sales folks are there to talk about ad placements in the layout. It's important that everyone's there to pull it all together.

Over the years, we've done mini-redesigns, changing a section or moving things around, but this summer we're going to add a new look. I can't tell you about it yet, and it hasn't all been decided.

OJR: How much feedback do you get via e-mail?

BS: We're averaging about 50,000 to 75,000 e-mails a week, so it's probably about 10,000 per day. We actually have a Viewer Services Department -- an offshoot of our efforts -- and basically they respond to as many e-mails as they can. It's something that we look at very actively.

OJR: You have an "Only on Fox" section now -- what's your thinking on original Web content?

BS: It was content that was already part of our site, but we thought it was a good idea to really break it out and make it obvious where that content is and distinguish it from the basic headlines that everyone would have. We felt that if we broke it out a little more, people would have an easier time finding it.

When we decide to do original content, we really want to do it all-out and make sure it's something people would look for every day. We don't want to just do it, and then it goes away. When you do it right, you have to commit the resources to it.

OJR: What do you think about pop-up ads? Do you limit those types of ads?

BS: We'd prefer not to have pop-ups, but it's kind of a necessary evil at this point. The whole industry is moving away from pop-ups and we likewise will do so. Right now we want to build a relationship with strong brands, and they don't tend to use pop-ups. The more we go toward that type of advertiser, the less we'll have the annoying pop-up.

OJR: How about full-screen rich-media ads or intromercials such as the ones at CBS MarketWatch?

BS: We try not to get into people's faces. We understand people are going there for the content, and they are realistic that there will be some ads there. But you don't want to interfere with the experience, and we're very conscious of that. In our case, we think that [rich media] would be a detriment. That's why people spend so much time with us, because they have such a positive experience.

OJR: So you had feedback saying 'we don't want things whizzing around the site' -- is your audience not open to that?

BS: It's a combination of feedback plus my personal feedback of visiting a lot of sites and saying to myself what's annoying to me. Although we're providers, we're consumers also, we look at things critically and say, 'Is that annoying, does that work for me, do I tolerate that, would that help me?' We think the same way as the average person.

OJR: Do you think the TV channel is doing a good job promoting the Web site?

BS: I also work on the channel side in addition to the Web site, so I straddle both worlds. While I am an advocate of the site, what's really bringing in the viewers, and what is the brand, is the television set. I'm not gonna fool myself or try to convince others that that's not the case because I don't believe it. I think the Web site is a strong adjunct to the brand, I think it's something that's important, but I don't think we should spend an inordinate amount of time on the air telling people to stop watching and look at the Web site.

The channel helps the site tremendously. The job of the site is to make sure we help the big parent, the channel.

Glaser blogs

I'll be the guest blogger at TheStandard.com this week, giving my take on the Net business news of the day. It's a flashback to when I was writing the Media Grok column and is my first true first-person blogging experience. Check it out and let me know what you think.